Individual legislators differ in the degree to which they work to cultivate personal votes. While conventional wisdom declares that the electoral system typically motivates the choice of legislative role, researchers have found difficulty assessing empirically the role behaviour of legislators. This study suggests using the content analysis of parliamentary questions as a mechanism to measure variations in personal vote‐earning strategies. To demonstrate the usefulness of this approach, and the constituency focus of Irish parliamentarians, 123,762 questions tabled by Dáil Deputies between 1997 and 2002 are analysed. While evidence of some orientation toward localism is apparent, the data suggest significant variations in role orientation among legislators. Competing electoral system and non‐electoral system explanations of intra‐system variation in personal vote‐earning effort are hypothesised and tested. Characteristics such as district magnitude, intra‐party competition, electoral vulnerability, geography, education, gender and career incentives only partially explain the variation. The results highlight the need to move beyond using electoral rules as a general proxy for role orientation and behaviour.

What is the relationship between electoral institutions and the internal organization of legislatures? Existing research on the U.S. Congress suggests that electoral incentives shaped by the candidate‐centered nature of congressional elections explain the emergence of strong committees in that legislature. Exploring the issue from a comparative perspective, it is argued that the impact of ballot structure on committee system structure is dependent on how legislators cultivate personal votes. Committees will be stronger when legislators supply fiscal legislative particularism (pork), but weaker when legislators cultivate support by delivering extra‐legislative constituency service. Statistical analysis, combining original data on committee design in 39 democratic legislatures with measures of ballot structure and mechanism to cultivate a personal vote (MCPV), confirms the expectation.

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Parties are not unitary actors, and legislators within the same party may have divergent interests, which complicates the understanding of parties’ motivations and behaviour. This article argues that holding a ministerial portfolio confers an electoral advantage, and so, in contrast to their co-partisans, politicians who are ministers simultaneously maximize policy, office and votes. New data on Irish elections over a thirty-year period show that ministers are insulated from the electoral cost of governing compared with their co-partisans. Differentiating between ministers and their co-partisans helps to resolve the puzzle of political parties’ choosing to enter government despite the evident electoral costs they will encounter. Moreover, previously overlooked electoral benefits of ministerial office help explain their desirability, and thus their ability to incentivize legislative behaviour in parliamentary regimes.

We investigate whether politicians whose family relatives previously served in parliament and cabinet enjoy a competitive “legacy advantage” in progressing from the backbenches to cabinet. This advantage may stem from two potential mechanisms: a direct effect attributable to the informational advantages of legacies or an indirect effect that operates through greater electoral strength. We evaluate the relative contribution of each mechanism using candidate‐level data from Irish parliamentary elections and cabinets from 1944 to 2016. Our results reveal that politicians with a family history in cabinet do enjoy an advantage in cabinet selection, and that this advantage cannot be attributed simply to greater electoral popularity.

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A legislature's ability to engage in oversight of the executive is believed to derive largely from its committee system. For example, powerful parliamentary committees are considered a necessary condition for the legislature to help police policy compromises between parties in multiparty government. But can other parliamentary instruments perform this role? This paper suggests parliamentary questions as an alternative parliamentary vehicle for coalition parties to monitor their partners. Questions force ministers to reveal information concerning their legislative and extra-legislative activities, providing coalition members unique insights into their partners behaviour. To test our argument, we build and analyse a new dataset of parliamentary questions in the British House of Commons covering the 2010-15 coalition. As expected, government MPs ask more questions as the divisiveness of a policy area increases. Legislatures conventionally considered weak due to the lack of strong committees may nevertheless play an important oversight role through other parliamentary devices, including helping to police the implementation of coalition agreements.

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